Corporate Memphis

Corporate Memphis is an art style named after the Memphis Group that features flat areas of color and geometric elements. Widely associated with Big Tech illustrations in the late 2010s^[1] and early 2020s,^[2] it has been met with a polarized response, with criticism focusing on its use in sanitizing corporate communication,^[1] as well as being seen as visually offensive, insincere, pandering and over-saturated. Other illustrators have defended the style, pointing at what they claim to be its art-historical legitimacy.^[3]

Illustration in Corporate Memphis style from humaaans design library

Origins

Flat art developed out of the rise of vector graphic programs, and a nostalgia for mid-century modern illustration.^[3] It began to trend in editorial illustration and especially the tech industry, which relied on simple, scalable illustrations to fill white space and add character to apps and web pages.^[1] The style was widely popularized when Facebook introduced Alegria, an illustration system commissioned from design agency Buck Studios and illustrator Xoana Herrera^[1] in 2017.^[4]

The name "Corporate Memphis" originated from the title of an Are.na board that collected early examples,^[1] and is a reference to the Memphis Group, a 1980s design group known for bright colors, childish patterns, and geometric shapes. The style itself was inspired by a synthesis of elements spanning the 20th-century, including the Art Deco style of the 1920s, futurism in interior design from the Atomic Age, and color and patterns from the Pop Art movement.

Visual characteristics

Corporate Memphis style artwork featuring characters with blue, orange, and purple skintones

Common motifs are flat human characters in action, with disproportionate features such as long and bendy limbs,^[2] small torsos,^[5] minimal or no facial features, and bright colors without any blending. Facebook's Alegria uses non-representational skin colors such as blues and purples in order to feel universal,^[4] though some artists working in the style opt for more realistic skin colors and features to show diversity.^[1]

Corporate Memphis is materially quick, cheap and easy to produce, and thus appealing to companies; programs such as Adobe Illustrator can be used to produce such designs rapidly.^{[citation needed]}

Reception and use

Once Facebook had adopted the style, the sudden ubiquity of vector graphics led to a critical backlash.^[3] The style has been criticized professionally and popularly (including in myriad internet memes) for being overly minimalistic, generic,^[6] lazy,^[2] overused, and attempting to sanitise public perception of big tech companies by presenting human interaction in utopian optimism.^[1] Criticism of the art style is often rooted in larger anxieties about the creative industry under capitalism and neoliberalism.^[5] Others have argued that Corporate Memphis deserves to be understood on its own merits separate from the corporations which regularly employ it.^[3]

Writing in The Globe and Mail, Jen Gerson criticized Canada's new 2023 passport design by likening it to the Corporate Memphis art style.^[7]

See also

• Material design, a Google-derived design language linked to Corporate Memphis
• Frutiger Aero, a prominent design style preceding Corporate Memphis that embraced contrasting skeuomorphism
• Hyperreality
• Postmodern art
• Metamodernism
• Capitalist realism